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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9080327" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER]In <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">his "Story Now" essay</a>, Ron Edwards quotes from the rules for Maelstrom Storytelling, and then reflects on them:A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game. The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story. The "doesn't interfere" matches to my "prioritization." The "narrative flow and enjoyment" matches to addressing Premise. The "whole point of the story" and "intent behind the scene" are Premise itself, expressed in this scene as a Bang. More topically, I can think of no better text to explain the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest.RQ is a game premised on "neutral" GMing. The resolution of a declared action is not sensitive to how important it is to, or how emotionally laden it is for, a PC (or their player). The GM, in framing and in narrating consequences, is expected to extrapolate from the fiction - the fiction as established, together with unrevealed fiction in the GM's notes, maps, keys, etc - without having regard to how important something might be to, or how emotionally laden something might be for, a PC (or their player).HeroWars/Quest, on the other hande, is not premised on "neutral" GMing. Players can incorporate into their action resolution elements that reflect importance, emotional weight and the like - eg via including relationships as augments, by spending Hero Points, etc. And the GM both in framing and in consequences narration is expected to have regard to such considerations.Or consider the following instruction to GMs, found in Burning Wheel (Revised p 109):If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create situations in play. If you're hunting a Vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!This is an instruction to GM in a non-"neutral" way. It would not be appropriate in RuneQuest, or in Gygax's AD&D.The neutrality in question is - as these examples show - primarily neutrality (or, if your prefer, disinterest) as to what the players want for their PCs. It extends to neutrality as to what NPCs want - eg in the neutral approach, this should be worked out by extrapolation from established fiction, by rolling on a chart or whatever. Whereas in (say) HQ or BW, as the example I just quoted shows, the GM is to work out what NPCs want by brining that into deliberate relationship with what the players want for their PCs.One of the best brief studies on this that I know is Vincent Baker's explanation, in In A Wicked Age, of how to establish "best interests" for PCs and NPCs, and of how the GM can the combine best interests with framing to set up or approach conflict in different sorts of ways. Reading that discussion will be helpful for an GM of HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World. But it's of no help at all for preparing to run RuneQuest.I continue to assert that the difference that Edwards notes between RQ and HW/Q, which I have elaborated on in this post, is the principal difference between the sandbox approach that [USER=13383]@robertsconley[/USER] is describing, and "story now".</blockquote>

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